He and two other members of the Navy crew spoke at a dawn news conference here at Hickam Air Force Base, giving crew members' first public account of the collision.

The flight engineer, Senior Chief Petty Officer Nicholas Mellos, used a single word -- mayhem -- to describe the scene in the cockpit as Lieutenant Osborn and his co-pilots tried to get their plane under control with nearly all their instruments and controls gone, and as other crew members tried to smash the secret equipment. All the while, there was a howling noise as air rushed in from holes in the hull, Chief Mellos said.

The EP-3 plane, with its crew of 24 and a trove of electronic surveillance equipment, was traveling ''straight and steady'' on autopilot, Lieutenant Osborn said. It was a routine patrol, he said, adding that the crew members had no reason to reproach themselves before the Chinese. ''No apologies necessary on our part,'' he said.

The Navy plane was heading away from Hainan island when the Chinese jet began making harassing passes, coming as close as 3 to 5 feet, he said. ''I was definitely concerned at this point,'' he recalled.

The Chinese plane, flown by Wang Wei, became unstable, Lieutenant Osborne said, as it tried to slow down to the speed of the American plane, which was traveling at 185 knots. Jet fighters are designed to fly at much higher speeds, and he lost control.

The bullet-shaped nose cone of the EP-3, which houses much of the plane's instrumentation -- including the vital speed and altitude indicators -- sheared off, and pieces of the wreckage hit the No. 3 engine, the inside right, and pierced the plane's pressurized cabin, causing air to rush in with a roar, he said.

Below, the lieutenant said, he could see the pieces of the Chinese jet in flames and a parachute descending. At about 10,000 feet, he said, he was able to hold altitude and began to stabilize the plane.

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''I called for bailout,'' the lieutenant recalled. Then, as the crew struggled into parachutes, he thought: ''We may be able to ditch. I activated the emergency destruct plan.''

But by then, he said, the plane had hardly any working controls. He said he pulled full rudder, full flaps -- the hinged surfaces on the tail and wings that determine direction and altitude -- and got no response.

An experienced EP-3 pilot, in an earlier interview, described the landing of the crippled plane as an astounding feat and described the technical difficulties involved.

The plane had lost power in two of its four engines. More important, the propeller of the far-left engine had been knocked clear of its gears, leaving its blade in a flat, rather than ''feathered,'' position. That meant, this pilot said, that the blades spun independently because of air resistance, becoming a kind of brake on one side, opposing the thrust of the two working engines.

The loss of the nose cone meant more wind resistance and caused the loss of vital instruments that tell how fast and high the plane is flying and so are crucial to landing. The flaps on the wings, also crucial to landing, were gone, too, he said.

''He must have just muscled it down,'' the other pilot interviewed earlier said, with some amazement.

Chief Mellos, the flight engineer, recalled a chaotic scene as Lieutenant Osborn and his two co-pilots -- identified by Navy officials as Lt. Patrick Honeck and Lt. j.g. Jeffery Vignery -- shouted at each other, struggling with the controls.

Lieutenant Osborn was shouting out Mayday messages over radio band 243. In the back, crew members were wielding axes and sledgehammers to smash surveillance gear. ''It was like we've trained and trained and trained for,'' Chief Mellos said. ''Thank God for the training.''